I'm the creator of a fantasy webcomic called Aikonia and I'm looking for some feedback! We recently updated our Patreon and, while feedback & suggestions from our immediate supporters/readers is great, I think that the perspective of outsiders – other webcomic readers/creators in general – would be really useful in refining the details!

What exactly do you expect when supporting a webcomic on Patreon? What kind of rewards do you think are best? Have you ever thought a specific reward would be cool to have but have yet to see one of the webcomics you support implement it?

tiers:- what's the difference between channeler student and caster student? they look identical to me- the per-page prices is a clever move, and i like the banners and names youve got for each tier- maybe clarify how much early access $4 patrons get? i wouldnt pay that much to be a week ahead, but to be a month ahead with a faster update rate than the plebs, id be happy to pay $4

the about:- i wonder if the webcomic description could be shorter? thats a lot of text for a visual medium - bear in mind most of your patrons will be coming from already reading your comic, or will read it to know what its about. - i know some people with comic patreons actually have an intro comic - sometimes specially made, sometimes taken from the comic itself and edited - that could be a good move sometime in the future- that said, lots of good tasty visuals, so thats great- the 'why patreon' bit could be streamlined, maybe the key points bolded or something, and maybe brought up earlier in the entire thing. you wanna answer the question 'why should i give you my money' asap- talking about the fact that patreon keeps the thing afloat is good, but reaches out only to the altruistic true fans - maybe include something about whats in it for them. becoming part of an exclusive community on the inside, smth like that- the lil rewards icons are great, love em- generally the end with the rewards and the discord is the strongest bit in terms of being bold, visually-driven, and easily digestible

this is a really professional looking patreon!! it makes a great first impression, and i wish you the best of luck with it

I like your graphics in the about section, but it's too long. A tip I've seen and have tried to follow is to talk first about what people can get for becoming a patron since most people going to the Patreon page will already know what the comic is about.

The why Patreon section seems a bit pointless to me since everyone is doing Patreon and we all know creators need money to help support them.

So I think "Rewards" should be first along with the Discord image, then the description of the comic and team, but shorter.

Looks really nice visually! Description is a little too long in my taste. In terms of what I usually see which I think you should be able to implement fairly easily:-bonus spinoff comics (like 1-2 pages long)-WIPs of pages (sketch stage, lineart stage, etc)-monthly Q&A of some sort, even just one question picked is fine-monthly+ patreon exclusive stream-character charts/reference pages -concept art

The difference between "Caster" and "Channeler" tiers are non-existent. It's a lore thing that our readers would understand

We do explain each reward in detail, but that's in a post that will eventually be buried away, so good point. At the moment, it's only three days ahead of "the plebs", so thank you for your feedback on that! We'll try to increase that to at least one week (at the moment, our buffer is only two pages ahead, so I don't know if we'd be able to make it one month ahead

Great point regarding the webcomic description! We'll fix that

We did make an intro comic before, actually! But we removed it because it’s in the old art style and we’re in the process of making a new one in the new art style!

We'll shorten the about section and improve the order the information is presented. You make a good point regarding informing people what's in it for them and our "Rewards" section is really not clear enough!

We'll move the "Why Patreon" section down lower, clarify it, and simplify it, but we won't remove it entirely just in case. I think the intro comic we are producing could go in that section later!

Haha, yup, it seems like "the about section is too long" seems to be a recurring note, so we'll make sure to reduce that

While we'd love to do bonus spin-off comics, unfortunately, we can't really afford to do so at the moment. It's actually one of our goals if you check the little "Goals" box on the left!

We do indeed post WIP of pages!

The Q&A is a great idea! We've gotten that one before and we plan on doing it on our Discord once per month.

At the moment, we have four livestreams planned per month but we don't think it's worth making it a private Patreon-only stream yet considering we're only at 7 Patrons (paying for CrowdCast to allow patron-only streams will cost more than what we make from Patreon)

The character charts/reference pages and concept art is a neat idea! We'll post these as "bonus content" and "exclusive content" for the $1+ tiers and $14+ tiers respectively.

Most of what I would suggest has already been gone over (too long descriptions, have more visuals, etc.) But I have a few more things!

My first tiny nitpick: the banner! I can see some text hiding behind the title, and it totally bugs me, haha! I would either remove it or move it to the top of the image.

Otherwise, the reward tiers strike me as odd for a few reasons.

1- The pricing. Generally, there is no difference mentally to people paying $5 a month as opposed to $4, or $10 instead of $8. The dollar or two is inconsequential to most--I think it'd be better if you went to $2, $5, $10, $15, and $20. You get a little more money per month and 99% of people won't care.

2- You said the two $1 tiers are more a story distinction, but does the patronage of either one have an actual impact or anything? Is there a contest going to see which wins? Is there a reward for the victor? If it's a superficial distinction that's just for fun, I would honestly delete the one with 0 patrons and rename the other one if you want. I personally think it's better to streamline and not cause too much clutter on your page.

3- Your higher rewards seem to be oddly geared towards other creators, since you're offering things like credit, links, and ad space. While offering that is fine, I feel like having that be the only upgrade on the $20 level lacks incentive for the common reader. I don't want you to pack in a lot more here, but maybe try and brainstorm some things to offer non-creatives.

If you're having trouble thinking of what to offer, you can always make a survey for your fans. It might give you some good data on what they value. I did one here on Google forms that really helped me narrow down what I wanted to offer (and it might give you some ideas, though you'll have to fill it out enough to go to the second page and see all that stuff).

In general I also feel like your rewards are kind of... vague? Like it's fine to keep succinct language in the tiers, but the about section doesn't give me much to go on either. I like the icons, but I wish you listed or showed some examples of what people might be getting? Especially with the exclusives--what ARE the exclusives? What is special about the Patron-only posts? How often are these things posted? I think it would help people visualize what content they'd actually be getting for their money.

Overall, everything else looks sharp and you've got a great basis to go on. Best of luck!

The pricing thing you bring up makes sense. I guess my logic there was that $5 felt like too big of a jump from $1. And once I changed that to $4, I figured I'd do 1, 4, 8, 16, 24. But then 8 -> 16 felt like too big of a jump again, so I changed it to $14 and then $14 -> $24 was a whole $10 for just one more thing, so I reduced it to $20. I'll just round everything to 1, 5, 10, 15, 20 and it wouldn't be too big of a deal I suppose.

The impact is just the indicator you get on Discord and next to your comments on the Aikonia site. It's really just an aesthetic thing and, if you're supporting the comic on Patreon, you're most likely a reader and a fan, so you'll relate to having those options. I guess another option would be to just have one "Student" tier and ask each patron to choose what category of student they'd like when assigning them the tags on comments and Discord, although that would mean it will no longer be an automated process

I totally agree about the $20 tier! I was really hoping to get some ideas for what else to offer to that tier. I just couldn't think of anything else I'm open to ideas! I tried the survey and no one really had anything else to add.

The rewards are explained in an update post on Patreon, which I should link to in the description because it'll get buried by newer posts. I got that suggestion above as well, so I'll work on improving that

Thank you again for the feedback! I might ping you again after I update, if that's okay!

The impact is just the indicator you get on Discord and next to your comments on the Aikonia site.

Oh okay, cool! Mostly wanted to know if there was a practical purpose, so since there is, I think that's cool. Maybe you could add a line about that in the tier? Like "Get 'X' title in the Discord!"? I know you mention a supporter badge, but honestly I didn't know what that was.

andrewdavidj:

I totally agree about the $20 tier! I was really hoping to get some ideas for what else to offer to that tier.

I know, it's a doozy. I had a lot of problems figuring that out for myself, too! I recently revamped my Patreon as well and had a hard time with it--I eventually settled on some low impact physical rewards and giving them access to an "eBook Library" where they could download PDFs and eBooks of my comic and the exclusive Kickstarter PDFs I had made. I still don't know if it's "worth it", haha.

Feel free to look at my rewards though and see if it gives you any ideas. It looks like a lot but since most of them are monthly, it ended up not adding a ton of work for me

Some other ones from my survey that had interest but that I shaved off were:

Q&As (character & creator based)

Exclusive item (like a postcard club where they get a new one each month with exclusive art on it)

Draw with me (on Appear.in)

I did Q&As for a year, but people got kind of burned out on it after awhile I think. Not that they didn't like seeing the end result, but they just stopped asking questions eventually. So be aware that could happen with you too since you don't have a high patron count yet. I've decided to make them a "soft reward" that I don't advertise, but do every few months.

andrewdavidj:

The rewards are explained in an update post on Patreon

Oh, duh. I think you mentioned that earlier and I forgot it. Yeah, when I'm looking at a patreon page I usually don't scroll down to see the posts unless a reward really sticks out to me and I want to see an example. This conversation makes me realize that maybe I should make my post more visible, too...

We do explain each reward in detail, but that's in a post that will eventually be buried away, so good point. At the moment, it's only three days ahead of "the plebs", so thank you for your feedback on that! We'll try to increase that to at least one week (at the moment, our buffer is only two pages ahead, so I don't know if we'd be able to make it one month ahead

i feel you on the buffer struggle - i once completely depleted a 3 month buffer, and only just got it back